Tuesday, February 3, 2015

As the Regional and Local (ReaL) Earth Inquiry Project has progressed, the tools and strategies for making and using Virtual Fieldwork Experiences (VFEs) have evolved. If you scroll back through this blog, you'll see periodic updates on how how to use and make VFEs. The project is now in its final months, but our VFE work will continue beyond the end of this particular project's funding.

This blog entry points to resources that have come online in the last few months, most importantly including the new regional Teacher Friendly Guides to Earth Science for Midwestern and Western US. Other regions will follow shortly, and older Northeastern and Southeastern Guides will be updated. The new guides all include or will include a chapter on actual and virtual fieldwork, and after this blog, is the next thing you should read as you begin your work with VFEs.

Most of the rest of the text of this post is a conference abstract from the October 2014 Geological Society of America meeting from a talk that shares the same title as this post. The abstract is followed by the Prezi used in that presentation and then by a set of related links. Most of these links are also embedded within the Prezi. Note that if you are viewing the Prezi in full-screen mode, the links will open in a new window that won't be visible until you exit full-screen viewing.

Abstract:

Why does a place look the way it does? How can we teach the reading of landscapes? Through two NSF-funded programs, “The Regional and Local (ReaL) Earth Inquiry Project” and “Improving Earth science education through teacher development in regional geology,” the Paleontological Research Institution has developed a rich set of resources and approaches to help educators teach about local geoscience in technology-rich, scientifically accurate and inquiry-based ways. The three-pronged approach: (1) develops a series of seven regional Teacher-Friendly Guides to Geoscience that collectively cover the entire United States; (2) develops, with our educator-partners, Virtual Fieldwork Experiences (VFEs) that are multi-media representations of actual field sites; and; (3) provides professional development (PD) programming that intertwines (1) and (2).

VFEs can serve in the place of actual fieldwork, but it is hoped that they serve more to catalyze and extend fieldwork than replace it. As framed in PRI’s work, VFE development requires actual fieldwork, and the VFE is a way to document that work and share it with others.

Resources include: (1) a set of regional Teacher-Friendly Guides; (2) a carefully crafted set of Bigger Ideas and Overarching Questions in Earth System Science, mapped onto idea sets like those in NGSS and the Climate Literacy Principles; (3) sets of questions that can be asked and productively investigated at any site, one set focused primarily upon the geosciences and a second focused upon ecology; (4) templates for Prezi and PowerPoint that help educators connect the question sets with local imagery and other data; (5) resources for connecting the field and the classroom via videolink in real time, and for connecting classrooms to one another, to facilitate students teaching one another about their local environments; (6) a still growing set of VFEs; and (7) tutorials for using Google Earth, Prezi, and other technologies in the service of making VFEs. Topics include using Google Earth to replicate the classic science education film Powers of Ten, but focused upon a local landmark rather than a Chicago park; how to use the VFE templates; how to mash up USGS digital geologic state maps with Google Earth’s profile tool, to show the interplay between bedrock geology and topography; and more.

Session Prezi:

Selected Links:

virtualfieldwork.org - One of two ReaL Earth Inquiry Project's websites. This is the set of resources related to virtual fieldwork. Here are some direct links to pages of special interest:

The VFE Database - a set of existing VFEs available in a clickable map of North America (and now, Greenland)

Make your own Powers of Ten - a set of tutorials demonstrating how to use Google Earth to recreate the classic Eames' Film Powers of Ten centered on your school or another local landmark.

Selected Technologies - A wide range of technologies have been used within the project, some are more heavily relied upon than others. Here are a few of the most relied upon.

http://zoom.us- for video conferencing. We've found Zoom to be more reliable and easier to use than other platforms used. It has the advantage of having nearly identical interfaces on Macs and PCs, and very similar ones for use on smartphones and tablets. We've also used it to link the field and the classroom.

Google’s Photo Sphere (Panoramas) - find it in the app store for your tablet or smartphone. Below is a photosphere of one of the two CZ Trees at the Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory. The app is free and easy to use.

About Me

PRI and its Museum of the Earth is located in Ithaca, NY, and was founded in 1932 by Gilbert Harris, professor of geology at Cornell University, to house his collection and library, the Institution has gone through several expansions, most recently with the creation of the Museum of the Earth. The Museum contains 8000 square feet of permanent exhibits, telling the history of life on Earth through the geological record of the Northeastern U.S. Unique elements include the skeletons of the Hyde Park Mastodon and Right Whale #2030 and the 544 square foot mural, Rock of Ages Sands of Time.

The background picture...

This is Angel Wing Mountain, Glacier National Park. It is aptly named because in aerial view, the back part of the Mt. is shaped like a pair of angel wings, courtesy of Grinnell Glacier. Note the snow in August. Photo by Sara Auer Perry

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0733303.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.